Month: May 2015

I am giving a small presentation and project proposal to my computer science class regarding Small Basic.The following is my cover description: Small Basic is a learner’s language meant for students ages 11-16, teaching the fundamental skills of programming, as well as laying groundwork concepts that will translate directly to VB and C#, in fact the…

Looks like I was the lone champion for the Small Basic Guru Awards in April: Small Basic Technical Guru – April 2015 Ed Price – MSFT Programming Games with Small Basic: Chapter 6: Tic Tac Toe Program Michiel Van Hoorn: “This is probably one of the best end-to-end tutorials for programming a simple (but well…

Today I will introduce some tips about File object in Small Basic. File.LastError Have you ever used File.LastError? Following program is a sample using File.LastError. File.LastError property contains file error message from Windows system. Following is a sample code. GetPath() While path <> “” TextWindow.WriteLine(“[” + path + “]”) files = File.GetFiles(path) If files =…

A lot of Small Basic programs use “Assets” in order to work, e.g. images, sound and text files. Key to Small Basic’s effectiveness is our ability to share code and programs. At present the sharing of code is seamless but the sharing of programs may not be. To demonstrate the difference I use the 2…

Today I’d like to introduce about new line (line break) codes of a multi-line text in Small Basic. There are three types of new line codes. CR+LF : used in Windows, MS-DOS CR (carriage return) : used in some cases LF (line feed) : used in Unix, Mac OS X Those codes can be defined…

Over in the May challenges from LitDev: https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/49548117-105e-4f79-b20f-709901f5784e/challenge-of-the-month-may-2015?forum=smallbasic I suggested some dragon games: Community Suggestion (By Ed Price) Write a Dragon Game. It can be any game where you try to slay a dragon, whether it is a text-based game, graphical, or a combination. You could also make the dragon the hero. …

Today, I’d like to introduce a Small Basic forum thread about Optimizing written by Ezra94. The following excerpt piqued my interest . . . . INTERVIEWER: How do you decide on the trade-offs between speed and performance? GATES: Sometimes it’s a trade-off between adding features and executing really fast, but there are ways of having lots and…

Thanks to litdev for leading another rousing month of challenges! These challenges are intended for people who are learning to program for the first time or for those returning to programming who want to start using Small Basic. Some will be easy, some will be hard – but they will all make you think,…

May the Thoughts be with you! Well, a small (and basic) nod there to Star Wars day, and we turn our thoughts to more the serious matter of ingesting the more valuable brain telemetry from and to our very own Internet of Thinkers! Connect to the real network, the world wide workers! Cut…